It's been a delightful tree, one of the first I planted when I started gardening. This Malus floribunda was showing signs of distress when this photo was taken a few years ago. When I embarked on a major overhaul of this bed last year, I lavished a lot of attention on it, removing huge suckers and pruning and reshaping. The bay tree on the right of the picture had blown down so I removed roots, masses of bluebells, lily-of-the-valley, rose suckers and prairie grass and created a Japanese style area with azaleas, small Miscanthus grasses and small conifers. And the crab apple was the main feature. This last spring it flowered magnificently and looked a picture.
And Miki loved it!
The other day, as autumn took its grip and moved inexorably towards winter, the base of the tree suddenly sprouted fungus. Now I'd seen the program on root rot fungi on Gardening Australia and recognised it immediately as the dreaded Armillaria or Honey Fungus. My tree was doomed.
So we spent the Sunday afternoon chopping down and poisoning the stump and now I shal have to cross my fingers that the other plantings don't succumb to the fungus' dreaded creeping underground fingers. According to my garden encyclopaedia, Armillaris is a native fungus with only limited effect on native plants but is very potent on the apple family. I had planted Malus "Ionensis" nearby. Is that too doomed?
3 comments:
Awwww, I loved this tree. The blossoms were so beautiful! And it created one of the nicest views...
As ever I'm awfully impressed that you can remember the name of a fungus from a tv show!
Bugger! I think I've even cut away the suckers a couple of times too. I'll miss the Lily of the Valley, but the Japanese garden really is looking beautiful.
Is the photo of Miki the one you took on your mobiles' camera? Looks better than what the old digital is doing at the moment!! :o)
Yes, I think it was my phone camera. Don't have bluetooth so don't use it much. Downloaded this one using Tara'a laptop.
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